Thomas Tuchel’s conviction is welcome. It will be tested

And so it begins, our Thomas Tuchel summer. Primary school kids will shave their hairlines back to their crowns, start switching their Ws and Vs, beg their parents to raid the M&S knitwear aisle. Someone Very Smart will write a think piece about how he’s actually very English when you think about it, maybe even the best of us (for what it’s worth, anyone caught referencing German efficiency should be conscripted to spend a day navigating the Rhineland by train). Perhaps most crucially, we can all stop talking about Phil Foden’s best position.

The squad announcement, leaked on Friday by disgruntled players via their gleeful agents, was a declaration that we are doing this Tuchel’s way, that he’s the captain now. This nation’s summer, its mood and hopes, lives and dies in his trust of Morgan Rogers, his love of Dan Burn. He was hired with one aim, and not only does he not care what you think about how he’s trying to achieve it, the “I know something you don’t know” grin as he slunk into his press conference was a giveaway that he enjoys the swirling opprobrium his decisions incited. He is already well versed in the madness the national team inspires.

The grand irony over the wildfire of national rage is that this is what fans have demanded for generations: an England manager willing to make difficult decisions, who isn’t in thrall to egos and the wider England-sphere, who won’t shoehorn Paul Scholes in on the left. It just turns out they didn’t want those difficult decisions. Of course, the reaction tells us more about the summer ahead than the squad itself, enveloped in frothing anger and club tribalism, grand conclusions already proclaimed and rewritten. A significant proportion of the animosity is rooted in a suspicion in and distrust of Tuchel; unproven in international football, largely unknown to the wider public and, most fundamentally, German.

Denying fans their name-brand players – Harry Maguire, Palmer, Foden – will not help this, but the fact that more scrutiny has fallen on selecting Ivan Toney than Jarell Quansah betrays that maybe this is more about the names than the players. Another element is that we are simply not used to club principles being applied to the national team, or really to a squad where any of 40 players could reasonably have been selected. In what can only be described as blatant disrespect for how English football has always done these things, he said: “It does not make sense for me to bring players and then play them out of position. It will make them uncomfortable [and] unhappy.”

This alien arch-pragmatism underpins every decision Tuchel has made, a squad with a pre-ordained hierarchy and structure. He has a tactical structure in mind and has only called up players that fit that, and made it very clear what their roles are on  and off the pitch: Toney as the specialist penalty-taker, the inverse Tim Krul; Noni Madueke and Ollie Watkins as specialist subs; Jordan Henderson as specialist padel partner. There will be no real flexibility within this, although he did mention the possibility of Reece James and John Stones as midfield cover. All eventualities are prepared for. He talked a lot about wanting committed, unselfish players, implying the existence of uncommitted, selfish players. The only real positional debates are Bellingham/Rogers and Gordon/ Rashford. If someone gets injured, their replacement is obvious. There is a plan here. All hail the plan.

The apparent strength of his conviction is encouraging, because it will be tested. He will be battered round the head with a Palmer-shaped stick every time England don’t score four goals, despite him never really being in contention to start anyway. Every pass recycled from midfield will incite calls for Adam Wharton, every corner cleared will summon the spectre of Maguire. But everything suggests he will enjoy going to war with the fanbase. One of Gareth Southgate’s great skills was maintaining the facade that we are all in this together, that this is the nation’s team. Tuchel is doing this alone, and he prefers it that way.

Much will be made of the dire March camp, the anaesthetic draw with Uruguay and defeat by Japan, but it is clear that these were solely for experimentation. Tuchel repeatedly referenced the three international breaks late last year as the ones that made his decisions: six games, 19 goals scored, none conceded.

The obvious question is what happens if the plan doesn’t work, but by that point it will already be too late. There are potentially eight games to play, no real time for tinkering or rehashing. Stress-testing this, trying to replicate the conditions of a World Cup quarter-final against Brazil in Miami, is impossible; the footballing equivalent of a rocket launch. Model and plot as much as you want, call up set-piece takers and perfect profile matches, but sometimes it’s still going to blow up on the launchpad. And so it begins, our Thomas Tuchel summer.

Photograph by Eddie Keogh – The FA via Getty Images